middle-age.

But here the train, emerging from the broken hilly country on the
outskirts of the forest, roared along the embankment which carries the
line across the rich converging valleys of the Wilner and the Arne. Tom
ceased to think either of possible advantage accruing to his own
fortunes, or these defects of the family humour which had combined to
dictate his present excursion, his attention being absorbed by the beauty
of the immediate outlook. For on the left Marychurch came into view.

The great, grey, long-backed abbey stands on a heart-shaped peninsula of
slightly rising ground. Its western tower, land-mark for the valleys and
seamark for vessels making the Haven, overtops the avenue of age-old elms
which shade the graveyard. Close about the church, the red brick and
rough-cast houses of the little market-town--set in a wide margin of
salt-marsh and meadow intersected by blue-brown waterways--gather, as a
brood of chickens gathers about a mothering hen. Beyond lie the pale
glinting levels of the estuary, guarded on the west by gently upward
sloping cornlands and on the south by the dark furze and heath-clad mass
of Stone Horse Head. Beyond again, to the low horizon, stretches the
Channel sea.

The very simplicity of the picture gives it singular dignity and repose.
Classic in its clearness of outline and paucity of detail, mediaeval in
sentiment, since the great Norman church dominates the whole, its appeal
is at once wistful and severe. And, this afternoon, just as the nearness
of the sea tempered the atmosphere lifting all oppressive weight from the
brooding sunshine, so did it temper the colouring, lending it an ethereal
quality, in which blue softened to silver, grey to lavender, while green
seemed overspread by powdered gold. The effect was exquisite, reminding